Nine-tailed Fox

Classical Chinese sources place nine-tailed foxes in mythic geographies such as Qingqiu (recorded in the Shanhaijing). Doctrinal accounts (cited in classical commentaries) describe a progression by age in which foxes gain increasing spiritual power—at fifty years they may transform into a woman, at one hundred years into a beautiful female or spirit-medium or adult male, and at one thousand years a fox may ascend to heaven to become a celestial fox. Separate doctrinal material associates a celestial nine-tailed fox with the Palace of the Sun and Moon and with ritual paraphernalia (fu talismans and a jiao ritual).

The core identifying feature is the presence of nine tails. A specific doctrinal account describes the celestial fox as golden in color. Classical accounts emphasize shapeshifting: older foxes commonly take human form, often appearing as beautiful men or women (female forms frequently appear in tales of seduction), and may also act as spirit-mediums.

Classical descriptions attribute age-linked powers and behaviors: transformation into human form at set ages (fifty, one hundred, one thousand years), knowledge of distant things (able to know events more than a thousand miles away), and capacities to bewilder or possess humans, or to harm by sorcery. Some tales describe fox spirits who seduce humans and in certain stories consume their bodies or spirits, while other narratives portray foxes as honorable. A doctrinal strain depicts a celestial nine-tailed fox serving in the Palace of the Sun and Moon that possesses its own fu (talisman) and a jiao ritual and is said to be able to 'transcend yin and yang' (as reported in classical commentary).